K44: Strategies – Policy
Richard Nolthenius, PhD
Laissez Faire Free Markets Cannot
Solve Climate Change
Legally Mandated Global Policy,
Enforced by Governments, is Essential
The Why, and How
The Fatal Premise Underlying Laissez
Faire Capitalism
• Laissez Faire capitalism (LFC) is built around a
central premise:
• A society of individuals freely pursuing their
own perceived self-interest best guarantees
the greatest welfare for society as a whole
• It is so beautifully, seductively elegant. Like a
symmetry principle in physics – it’s so
beautiful, the strong temptation is to believe it
just HAS to be true. Yet….
This premise has no hope of being valid in
a finite world of diminishing resources
• Because what this principle actually guarantees, is the most rapidly
efficient exploitation of Nature by those with the most economic
power to effect that exploitation
• Does this lead to the greatest long-term welfare for society? No.
• Advocates of LFC will say that a virtue of LFC is that it does not try to
impose any value system on people. What people are willing to pay
for, they get, regardless of anyone’s moralizing, and they get it in the
fastest and most efficient way.
• Laissez Faire is “value free” Yet this very “virtue” is its fundamental
flaw for the following reason –
• Human beings have a specific nature, and our long-term ACTUAL
welfare is therefore constrained to lie within a narrower set of
possibilities which are in harmony with our specific nature, and not
necessarily the same choices as those which motivate our immediate
gratifications.
• We have the POWER to disobey what is, in fact, in our best interests,
and we do it all the time. Now that we have overfilled the Earth, we
simply can’t afford to continue doing so. We can’t afford to continue
obeying Nolthenius’ First Law – “People Learn the Hard Way”
A Unique Time in Human History
• Human ancestors evolved about 6 million years ago.
Modern Homo Sapiens about 200,000 years ago. Even
taking the shorter figure, that’s about 6,666
generations
• Here, in the 6,667th generation, we’re butting up
against the limits to growth on a finite planet
• Until now, our “selfish gene” has evolved the desire in
us for growth, for fighting other species and pillaging
Nature for our place and our safety and dominance in
the world. Pretty well describes Capitalism’s attitude
• But Nature also evolved in us a forebrain, capable of
projecting a future, for planning, for error-detection.
Will we use it now that it is most needed, or will we
succumb to the older impulses?
It’s been said “It is easier to
imagine the End of the World than
the end of capitalism” (source)
• Will we get both, one right after the
other?
The Irony of Ayn Rand
• She wrote her magnum opus “Atlas Shrugged” hoping to inspire
the youth of her day – the ‘50’s and ‘60’s – to sweep away
socialism in favor of laissez faire capitalism and a world of neverending growth in human triumph
• Her acolytes have captured the Republican Party (which as
recently as the late ‘80’s still acknowledged the reality and
danger of climate change), and, fed by ideology and corporate
money, have paralyzed any climate policy action and doomed our
future
• It may well be that the historians of the future, such as it may be,
will see the pivotal role Rand played in having destroyed the very
Civilization on Earth she hoped to make triumphant
• Her never-recanted hatred of environmentalists as nothing but
ignorant unwashed hippies, has remained in the Objectivist and,
now as well, the Republican psyche as a visceral, emotional choke
point that stops all thought and refocuses the Republican
attention on the never ending pursuit of cash as the source of
their virtue
We cannot afford to be “Value-free”.
This is where climate and commons
come in
• The Earth is a world of unavoidable commons:
the air, the oceans, the great forests, and climate
• The diffusion time for molecules in the
atmosphere is just a week or two. Everyone’s
CO2 becomes everyone else’s CO2 very quickly
• Climate is a globally interconnected system
• Ocean currents are continuous across the entire
planet, across national boundaries
• These facts CANNOT be changed by trying to
privatize them, as some extreme libertarians
have suggested
On the other hand - Be careful of the
word “Capitalism”
• There is nothing inherently evil about the idea of
forming a corporation from private money to build an
enterprise which is too big to fund individually, and do
so quickly, in order to be competitive.
• There is nothing evil about the idea of a market of
equity values determined by the diligence of individual
investors, as motivators to help fund the enterprise.
• There is nothing inherently evil or morally wrong with
the idea of a free market (to the largest extent
consistent with society’s welfare) giving large rewards
to those who make the greatest efforts and take the
greatest risks in providing new enterprises for the
genuine benefit of Earth and its people.
And there IS something inherently morally
wrong with enforcing exact wealth equality
between all people, regardless of their
contribution to human welfare.
• Economic reward is a prime incentive to do good.
Communism was and will remain, a dismal
failure. Even if it were attempted by noble
leaders, it in gross contradiction to our nature.
• “Doing well by doing good” is … inherently
GOOD, because it promotes doing good! Just to
be obvious about it.
• BUT – you have to be doing true GOOD, in
harmony with actual healthy human nature, not
run by short-sighted psychopathologies (see
PowerPoint K40b)
Laissez Faire Capitalism guarantees accelerating
depletion of finite resources and destruction of
commons through an amplifying feedback
• Witness the ruthless hunting of the last rhinoceroses
causing, and because of, the steep rise in the price of
their horn as supply disappears, and elephants for their
tusks. An amplifying feedback of resource depletion
• Witness the spectacle of bluefin tuna selling for tens of
thousands of dollars apiece, thus accelerating the pace
at which the large fishes of the sea are relentlessly
hunted to the last.
• And worst of all – witness the air and oceans being
treated as free waste dumps by corporations who have
bought their governments, and worse - are being
heavily subsidized by taxpayers to do it
Libertarians have argued that this is
precisely why ALL resources should be
privately owned
• …so that the owners will have economic incentive (they’ll charge you!) to
protect the long-term value of their assets rather than squander them before
the next guy does.
• False. Corporations did not create the great forests, nor the air, nor the oceans,
nor our climate – They have value just as they are - in their pristine state, not
merely as raw materials for industry. These were given by Nature to all people.
• Do Libertarians (such as Milton Friedman) swell with joyous anticipation at the
image of people standing in line and paying a stiff toll just to walk into a small
remaining stretch of un-trampled wilderness? Is this their vision of Utopia?
• Witness the clearcutting of massive forests as the price of lumber rises due to
overharvesting-induced scarcity, which itself accelerates lumber prices in a
vicious circle. Witness Pacific Lumber Co.
• A more accurate wording of what Libertarians advocate, is that corporations
should be able to hold for ransom Nature’s forests, our atmosphere, and our
oceans. If people want clean air, clean water, and forests, they should have to
pay for it (paraphrasing Milton Friedman) – say Libertarian purists
The Fatal Flaw: People Make their
Decisions “On the Margin”
• We learned in Econ 101 that “People make their economic
decisions ‘On the Margin’”
• In other words, we ask the marginal utility of making
decision X vs. decision Y, holding other considerations
constant.
• The PERSONAL utility of being able to drive instead of walk
5 miles to the store, is very significant indeed. Yet the 5 lb
of CO2 you generate in your car by driving those 5 miles,
diluted over the entire globe, makes only a “marginal
damage” to your personal climate which is irrelevantly
small.
• It’s the personally rationally and globally irrational decision
to drive vs. walking.
• A similar argument holds for the destruction of all the
different commons of this world
Externalized Costs Must be
Converted to True Costs
• Externalized costs is a vast and pervasive flaw in the laissez faire
paradigm. What would fossil fuel companies have to charge for their
products if they were forced to pay for…
• --- the destruction of the 217,490 miles current coastlines?
• ---the costs of insurance premiums caused by weather disasters?
• ---the costs of wars to be fought over food and water as climate
zones shift too rapidly for agriculture to adapt to?
• ---the cost of destroying the ocean's ecosystems through
acidification by CO2?
• --- Compensating most of the world’s population for rendering
uninhabitable the land they live on now? (shall we start the bidding
at, say, $Infinity?)
• This list could go on…. What if those costs were then returned,
dollar-for-dollar, directly to those who will pay those costs - all of us,
and our children? This would provide overwhelming incentive to
drastically cut CO2 emissions and scale up non-fossil energy sources
such as wind, nuclear, and photovoltaics.
Climate and Carbon Policy
• Our infrastructure today is built around carbonbased energy. Globally, non-carbon energy
sources account for only a few percent of the
total.
• We cannot instantly end carbon emissions
without mass starvation
• So the issue becomes – how do we most
efficiently transition to a zero carbon emission
world?
• Since we cannot legislate away carbon instantly,
and since price structure is how value is made
transparent in the modern world (and properly
so), we can reframe the question to this:
How do we motivate, through price, the
rapid ending of carbon emissions?
• First, there is one more essential ingredient to add before
understanding the wisdom of the proposals which I will present…
• Our finite Earth has over 90% of its arable land already converted to
human use - agriculture in its various forms
• Ships scour virtually every cubic mile of ocean with highly efficient
factories-at-sea and have already removed the large majority large
fish. Why? Because if THEY don’t get those last and therefore most
valuable fish, some competing ship will (the Tragedy of the Commons).
• The carrying capacity of the Earth with sustainable technologies is less
than the actual population of today. We are overdrawn and getting
more so every day.
• Therefore, it is consumption itself which must be dis-incentivized
through the price mechanism. But, most especially, carbon-generating
consumption
• We cannot simply expect to continue to have all people across the
Earth consume more and more. Envy, economic inequality, etc. must
all take a back seat to this stark physical fact.
The Bio-capacity of Earth continues to decline from over-exploitation,
while the demands of soaring populations have us rapidly eating
through our “seed corn”, especially since 2000.
Economic Motivation
• The temptation is for people to let some smart
people somewhere figure how to let them
continue their consumptive lifestyles by simply
making those lifestyles less carbon-intensive.
• This is fatal, as we saw earlier in this course
(PowerPoint K40b)
• Without price involvement for everyone, too few
people will be motivated to do anything significant
to de-carbonize. Oil really is an incredibly energydense substance and we’ve already invested
massively in the infrastructure to utilize it.
• Climate is GLOBAL, and caused GLOBALLY.
How Draconian Must Policy Changes
Be to Stabilize Climate?
• Are any of the existing strategies out there significant
enough to halt climate change?
• We can’t advocate for policy action properly until we
know what the climate GOAL is, and know what the
physics limitations are, to achieving that goal
• It’s pointless to spend one’s limited time and energy
advocating for measures which are hopelessly too
small to matter
• Worse, it’s taking valuable human energy and
commitment, and wasting it - ultimately turning it to
cynicism or depression or both.
Wealth, Civilization, and Energy
• Our previous PowerPoint K43 explained the
Thermodynamics of Civilization itself, and showed
that current energy consumption is proportional
to the total sum of all countries’ annual Gross
Domestic Product, then summed again over all
past years of human existence
• Since the past cannot be changed, we are in real
trouble if we continue to insist on a Growth Uber
Alles paradigm for the global economy
• Little measures like moving away from fossil fuels
but at a rate that doesn’t harm growth, are
hopelessly inadequate – see the next slide
The Wildly Celebrated US/China Emissions Pledges… do very little.
Even if the entire world follows, CO2 emissions per year at best stay
flat so that atmospheric CO2 continues to climb, and global
temperatures would continue to climb, past +4C
Climate scientist and director of the Tyndall Climate Centre in the UK
Professor Kevin Anderson, in interviewing many top climate
scientists, observes that….
So the Answer to: “How Draconian
Must Policy Action Be?”
• From Garrett’s work, Draconian enough to
require reversing the accumulated Wealth of
Human Civilization, it would seem
• That’s a very bitter pill to expect people to
swallow. Can we hope for people to mature
enough, care enough about the future world, and
become scientifically literate enough to really
digest with their own minds the necessity of this?
• I think that’s extremely unlikely.
• It will most likely follow Nolthenius’ First Law:
“People Learn the Hard Way”
Why not count on inspiring selfless
acts of social conscience towards a
low carbon lifestyle?
• The numbers simply make this strategy
impossible (next slide).
• Climate is GLOBAL. CO2 is GLOBAL and recognizes
no personal, political, or national boundaries.
Most new carbon pollution is now from Asia,
whose people desperately want “the good life”
we have enjoyed in the West for generations, and
are quite resistant to being told by the U.S. that
the Earth can’t afford their energy-intensive
desires. “Sorry – you missed the party”, doesn’t
sit well.
Let’s Do the Math…
• Suppose we motivate, through whatever inspirational work, 100 million people to
voluntarily cut their carbon footprint in half (almost certainly impossibly
optimistic, considering Garrett’s work)…
• In the US, the per capita CO2 footprint is 17 tons/year per person. Assume all 100
million people are high-carbon Americans
• 2015 global CO2 emissions were 40 billion tons/year
• Therefore: 17 x ½ x 100 million people = 850 million tons CO2/year savings = 2.1%
of the world emission rate.... Negligibly small
• OK - Raise it to 1 BILLION people voluntarily cutting their carbon footprint by ½
and use a correspondingly more realistic 9 tons CO2 per year per person (they
can’t all be Americans) and you still only cut global CO2 emissions by 13%. That’s
ALMOST no difference to our future
• Repeat for emphasis: Convincing 1 billion people in the industrial world to cut
their carbon footprint IN HALF by drastic cuts in lifestyle and conservation, only
cuts global CO2 emissions by a paltry 13%, when we need to cut it to ZERO,
RAPIDLY, just for starters.
So I am not one to Guilt-Trip anyone
for not voluntarily lowering their
personal carbon footprint
• We may be shy to admit it out loud, but we all know – one
(or even one billion) person’s noble sacrifice will do
essentially nothing for solving the ACTUAL PROBLEM, and
yet may entail a significant loss to a person and their
family.
• Such sacrifice needs to be WORTH it!
• But if we ALL make severe sacrifices, such that we actually
do save a livable future – that’s an entirely different
proposal!
• Therefore, what is required is government policy,
universally enforced. Voluntary local/individual
conservation, realistically looked at, isn’t near enough
Drastic Action is Necessary
• Quite possibly even impossibly drastic action,
certainly to preserve the world of my own
youth and genuinely stabilize climate and
coastlines.
• Still, for the purposes of laying out policy
proposals, let’s continue
• The science presented should at least allow
you to look at unpalatable political solutions
with a more open mind…
Proposals For Most Efficiently Ending
Carbon Emissions
• Specific government policies to motivate
ending of carbon emissions and
promoting a better world for future
generations…
Action #1. Tax-and-Dividend
• This idea was first proposed by former head of the Goddard Institute for
Space Sciences, climatologist James Hansen
• Tax-and-Dividend
• Tax carbon wherever it enter our borders, whether at the well-head in mining
and drilling locations, or at ports of entry by ships. (Let’s be honest - it’s a
TAX, for those who are taxed – the fossil fuel industry. It’s not a fee. They get
nothing for having to pay this. It’s a tax just as surely as any other tax,
regardless of the fact that “tax” is a dirty word for many)
• Dividend: The money collected should be given to all citizens of the country,
with as little taken off for administrative costs as possible.
• Citizens Climate Lobby is a grass-roots organization and has as their sole
purpose to try to ask Congress to enact Tax-and-Dividend legislation. We
have an active local chapter. Ask me about the Santa Cruz chapter, if
interested.
• Carbon, thanks to massive government subsidies, enjoys the luxury of
externalizing its true cost to Civilization, twisting the economic incentives
towards destruction of the future.
• That external cost must be internalized so as to reflect carbon’s true cost to
Civilization. If the only price determiner is the cost to pull it out of the
ground, and not the future cost to global climate, we’re doomed.
How to Dividend?
• Some might argue that the dividend money should be allocated with other
agendas targeted; reducing economic inequality, promoting specific clean
energy technologies, etc.
• This is a bad idea for several reasons (with one exception, see next slide):
• 1. Government has a poor history of choosing which companies to reward
(e.g. Solyndra, which went bankrupt)
• 2. Right wing organizations will fight such liberal agendas so vigorously
that they are very unlikely to ever happen
• 3. Price structure alone should be sufficient to motivate people properly, if
halting climate change is the single motivating goal, as it should be.
• Still, it leaves open other questions: shall we dividend equal amounts per
household? Equal per person? Equal per voter?
• These are details of lesser importance. However I would argue for “equal
per household” because it then de-motivates forming larger families to
collect more checks; itself a value for a finite planet
• Dividend’ing might also be accomplished directly by using the relatively
new idea of micro-payments, although this will be technically difficult for a
global problem like carbon emission, and micropayment systems even
within a country have been extremely difficult. In the U.S., micropayments
have been unsuccessful due to the high cost of transactions.
Beyond Dividend: Adding to the
Carbon Tax
• CO2 obeys no national boundaries, so there is no economic
incentive for one company or one nation to unilaterally take on
the burden of removing EVERYone else’s CO2.
• This means that only a miniscule effort will go into this vital
piece of the solution, as indeed we have been seeing
• The profit motive here needs help
• I’d advocate for a portion of the carbon tax to go to directly
funding the research, development and deployment of massive
atmospheric CO2 removal/sequestration installations
• Think of it this way – the Hansen-advocated Carbon Tax only
dis-incentivizes newly emitted carbon emissions, while
leaving the mess that past emissions have made
unaddressed.
• This is critical - research shows that natural removal of
atmospheric CO2 is not fast enough to save us.
A “Bounty” on Carbon
• It would seem funding this effort must be paid for by a global
fund which each country should be obligated to contribute to,
perhaps most efficiently and fairly from its own carbon tax, or
perhaps weighted by accumulated past carbon emissions.
• In other words: A “bounty” on atmospheric
carbon captured and sequestered, earned
by any who undertake it.
• Imagine Clint Eastwood riding into town
with bricks of newly minted CaCO3 in his
saddle bags, looking for his $reward
The Powerful Efficiency of Tax &
Dividend
• The singular beauty of this proposal is not just its simplicity,
but how it then motivates ALL people to de-carbonize their
lives.
• They will find prices for all carbon intensive goods and
services going up, significantly, as the carbon tax is factored
into business models
• However, new costs will be proportionally higher for carbonintensive expenditures like fossil fuel-based gasoline and
heating, and less so for cleaner or renewable energy sources
(solar PV panels, wind turbines, carbon-neutral fuels),
financially motivating more rapid migration to clean energy.
• The costs will be offset to some extent by the dividends
received in the mail, which should come with no-stringsattached in how it is spent.
• Simple!
It’s the Money. FOLLOW THE MONEY… It
is Fossil Fuel Corporate’s Single-Minded
Mission
• Kyle Reese in “Terminator”: “Listen, and
understand - That Terminator is out there! It
can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned
with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And
it absolutely will not stop - Ever! Until you are
dead!” (video clip)
• And the rest of us as well, perhaps. Look at the
massive financial motivation they (Big Oil) have
for continuing exactly what they are doing…
Sanders-Boxer Carbon Tax Bill
• This was submitted to Congress by Bernie
Sanders and Barbara Boxer in 2013. It proposes a
tax of $20/ton of CO2 , rising 5.6%/yr for 10
years. 60% of which would be refunded to US
citizens, and 40% to incentivize alternative energy
• It’s given a near-zero chance of surviving the
Republican congress, and indeed I’ve been unable
to find any recent reference to the bill or its fate.
• Even more depressing, we will see in K45:
“Strategies: Technology” that it will require more
like $1,000 per ton of CO2 to scrub it from the
atmosphere, according to the people most
involved in trying to develop that technology)
Action #2. End Government Subsidies
to Fossil Fuel Corporations
• In 2014, the U.S. directly subsidized fossil fuel corporations by $21
billion for exploration and production.
• That’s a fantastically profitable 1,200% ROI (return-on-investment) on
their $1.8 billion spent for lobbying. That’s a FAR better ROI than
transforming their business model to “go Green”.
• Globally, subsidies in the form of direct cash, tax breaks, and breaks
on external environmental costs are estimated to be a staggering
$4,900 billion in 2014, although less than ¼ of this is due to current
climate change and no accounting is made for the vastly higher
environmental costs of coming climate change (summary of linked
IMF report)
• This same report shows China has subsidized fossil fuels at the rate of
$2,300 billion, and the U.S. at $700 billion.
• Global subsidies projected to rise to $5,300 billion for 2015.
• This is over 6% of Gross World Product; more than is spent on all
healthcare, worldwide
Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies in billions of dollars (left scale): Pre-tax = direct cash and
tax breaks. Post-tax includes externalized costs to the environment. Pre-tax trend
has been down due to falling energy prices. Post-tax continues to rise as
environmental damage escalates. Half of global subsidies are from developing and
emerging Asia (Intl. Monetary Fund report)
Subsidies in the form of externalized costs: local
pollution is about half, current global warming ¼.
The rest is in direct cash, tax breaks, and other
financial factors. Developing Asia accounts for half
of all global energy subsidies, Advanced economies
¼ of the total
However, most carbon emissions
are not from the United States.
China is the biggest source today
China is indeed
de-carbonizing
(slowly, blue
curve), but that
trend is
overwhelmed by
the sheer
acceleration of
their new energy
consumption, so
CO2 emissions
continue to rise
Africa, Central and South America, and the Middle East are
also continuing to accelerate their CO2 emissions
Action #3: Severe trade sanctions against
all countries who do not institute
Tax/Div, and end fossil fuel subsidies
Most carbon emissions are not from the U.S., and the
U.S. fraction is dropping every day. Passing these laws
only for the U.S. will do very little to slow CO2 emissions.
It is essential that other countries are compelled to do
the same, especially China
Unfortunately, China is transitioning from being the
manufacturing exporter to the world, to catering to its
growing middle class consumers at home, so this may be
harder to accomplish by trade sanctions
Will it work? Some argue sanctions don’t work. Got a
better idea? I’d love to hear it – email me!
Action #4. Tax Consumption, Not
Income
• An obvious truism is – if you want less of something, tax it. If you want
more of something, tax it less.
• It is the pillage of the natural world’s animals, forests, and landscape
which is polluting our commons, and needs to be economically disincented
• There is nothing inherently wrong with income that it should be taxed.
There IS something inherently damaging about consumption on a
planet which is already using up its resources at a pace far beyond
what can be replaced and healed by Nature. Climate is just one aspect
of this.
• The machinery for collecting sales taxes already exists in most states,
and our state and federal income tax laws are an abomination to any
sane person who looks at the thousands of pages of the IRS Tax Code.
• Political Progressives will complain this preferentially taxes the poor,
who spend a greater proportion of their income on consumption,
while the rich tend to invest (or buy influence). That’s a social issue I’ll
not discuss, and no doubt has work-arounds. Our goal here is to ask
what policies will incentivize a long-term stable climate, and that
means much lower consumption by all – rich and poor.
Action #5. End the Child Tax Credit, and other
government policies which encourage more
population production
• The rationale for the child tax credit is to help financially
strapped parents with the big expense of child-rearing
• But overpopulation is a key source of the vast
environmental and climate problems we have created.
Children are adorable, and parents usually find the psychic
rewards of having children far outweigh the damage to the
Earth that their OWN children will have (remember from
Econ 101: “all economic decisions are made ‘on the
margin’”)
• Very true. But such argument can be made by all ~billion
families on Earth, and this economic reasoning on the
margin can therefore only be blunted by policy universally
enforced.
• It’s another example of “Tragedy of the Commons”. Think
globally.
Population Policies Need to be Far More
Drastic Than you Might Imagine
• Bradshaw and Brook (2014) did a careful study, using accurate
demographics for each country, with different scenarios for policy,
including of what 1-child-per-family, instituted worldwide, today,
would do to human population trends…. (see next slide)
• Gradual transition to 1-child-per-family by 2045 results in eventual
population drop after mid-century, but is still as high as 4 billion in
the year 2100
• Meanwhile, China just cancelled its “one child per family” policy.
• Out-breeding other countries is touted as a get-ahead strategy by
some in this competitive world – is this a good strategy to dominate
a dwindling planet?
Bradshaw and Brook
(2014) population
studies. Even 1-child per
family worldwide doesn’t
begin to dent world
population till very late
in the century.
Even catastrophic multibillion person die-offs
(lower graph) due to
climate chaos etc., bring
us to sustainable levels
only if most people on
Earth die.
These are NOT
encouraging
projections.
Our Population, Industrial Output, Nonrenewable Resources, and Pollution are All
on Overshoot-and-Crash Trajectories (see
next slide, from van Vuuren et al. 2009)
• From "Growing Within Limits (GWL)" van Vuuren
et al. 2009 for the Netherlands Environmental
Assessment Agency. Trends since the first GWL
assessment was published in 1972. The green line
shows their model fit to observed data (purple
dots) and shows we are on an "overshoot and
crash" trend, vs. the blue curve which follows a
maximum sustainable (w/o crash) path initialized
to 1972 values - for population, energy use, nonrenewable resource use, and pollution. The green
tracks turn down (even pollution turns down)
when humans suffer large de-population.
Action #6. An Amendment to the
Constitution
• I propose a 28th Amendment to the Constitution…
• Congress shall permit no law denying the rights
of present and future citizens to safe commons,
including air, ground water, river water, and
natural forest. Congress shall permit no laws
which interfere with the existence of a natural
environment in harmony with the right to life
and the pursuit of happiness by future as well as
present citizens.
How to Bring About These Policies?
• The hard evidence proves it is certainly not by politely
asking “please”, hat-in-hand, to our law-makers…
• Princeton University researchers (Gilens and Page 2014)
studied the key variables of 1,779 policy issues contained in
congressional legislation bills proposed and passed over a
20 year period, and found that the desires of the average
citizen had a “miniscule, statistically insignificant” (i.e.
consistent with zero) correlation with what legislation was
actually enacted
• ZERO CORRELATION.
• Instead, enacted legislation had very high correlation with
what was desired by the economic elites and their lobbies.
• You might want to take some blood pressure meds before
following along…
Whether average citizens hated or loved a policy
proposal had zero correlation (flat line) with whether
the policy was enacted (Gilens and Page 2014)
But the legislative preferences of Economic
Elites correlated ~perfectly (correlation coeff
=0.78) with what was enacted. (Perfect=1.00)
*Average Citizens: ~0
correlation.
*Mass-based lobbies,
(like CCL, 350.org): not
much better; 0.24
correlation).
*Business interest
groups, significant
(0.43) correlation.
*Economic elites: very
strong (0.78)
correlation
Most Important for Climate…
• ***Notice the left end of the previous graph; that when
economic elites and their lobbies strongly opposed legislation,
it had a 0% chance of being enacted.
• They were 100% efficient in stopping
legislation which they strongly opposed.
• Today, the economic elites are the right-wing ideologues who
strongly oppose climate science, climate scientists, and
government interference in fossil fuel business (except for huge
government oil and coal subsidies – they’re OK with that part)
• So what chance does “write your congressman” actually have in
getting enacted the policy ideas we’ve discussed?
• What has “write your congressman” accomplished so far? Have
we gotten action, or just stall tactics, empty promises,
handshakes, and the rest of the artful dodging obvious for over
25 years now? I leave that as an exercise for the student. OK,
exercise over – here’s the answer:
• The evidence is overwhelming …
Your Influence:
ZERO!
• I will not be convinced people actually have as
their actual primary goal the halting of climate
change until they face this brute fact and stop
the insanity of doing the same thing over and
over and getting the same zero result, as our
planet tips over the edge.
• “We Are What We Repeatedly Do” –
Aristotle
• What does that say about your
Congressperson’s Integrity?
From a New Book by an Anonymous
Democratic Congressman…
• "Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in
the power and special-interest money that's lavished upon them."
• "My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes
precedence over everything."
• "Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of
government and how it works."
• "It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, selfabsorbed sheep who crave instant gratification."
• "Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on.
Like many of my colleagues, I don't know how the legislation will be
implemented, or what it'll cost."
• "We spend money we don't have and blithely mortgage the future
with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation. It's about getting
credit now, lookin' good for the upcoming election."
Ponder these things, as you ponder our voting
choices for the next Leader of the Free World
Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the rate of CO2
emissions steeply rising despite the continued climate
Summits and IPCC Assessment Reports. Not just total CO2
emission, but emission rates below, have nearly DOUBLED
since the formation of the IPCC.
But There is Great Hope by Some that the 2015
Paris Summit will Finally Result in Enforceable
and Significant Carbon Reductions
• Hope not well placed, in my judgment, and in the
judgment of most climate scientists
• A large amount of the funding for the Paris summit came
from the Fossil Fuel Industry and major carbon emitting
corporations (!)
• This was also true at the previous COP20: the Warsaw
Climate Summit of 2013, where the obvious disinterest in
making any commitments resulted in a walkout by
environmentalists (the tote-bags of the participants were
adorned with the logo of Grupa Lotos – Poland’s second
largest petroleum company, for example)
A Fact Overlooked…
• We are so proud of how we have free elections, and that the People
elect their leaders, intelligent or not, competent and moral or not.
• But once elected, those politicians have no legal mandate to obey what
the voters want. And clearly, that shows in these results
• Once in office, elected politicians do what their paying sponsors want.
And their sponsors are Economic Elites and corporate lobbies.
• The People only have the freedom re-elect them years later, or try yet
again with some other politician instead
• The People only have the power of who gets elected (well, except for
Bush in ‘00 in Florida, Bush in ‘04 in Ohio, … etc.)
• We can vote for Tweedle Dee, or for Tweedle Dum. That’s our choice.
• The People do NOT have the power to control what Tweedle-Dee-Dum
DO, once in office.
• The Gilens and Page (2014) study results were released in Spring ‘14. It
got a minor flurry of attention in the press at the time, but the
Complacency of the People is a mighty force to be
reckoned with.
• Like climate itself, it was just a headline to sigh about…. And then forget.
The Proper Response
• …. To morally outrageous behavior towards our
future
• …. Is MORAL OUTRAGE
• Where is the moral outrage, I ask you?
• This brings us to another issue…
Confronting Law-makers
• “Iron John” - the classic
work by poet Robert Bly,
of an ancient myth
brought to life, has a
revealing segment on a
certain type of male… I’m
going to quote it on the
next slide. It has great
insight to offer on healthy
assertiveness in the
service of Life, for both
genders…
Stealing the Key to Let Iron John Out
of the Cage
“…And the key has to be stolen. I recall talking to an
audience once about this problem of stealing the key. A
young man, obviously well trained in New Age modes of
operation, said ‘Robert, I’m disturbed by this idea of
stealing the key. Stealing isn’t right. Couldn’t a group of
us just go to the mother and say ‘Mom, could I have the
key back?’?”
His model was probably consensus, the way the staff
at the health food store settles things. I felt the souls of all
the women in the room rise up in the air to kill him. Men
like that are as dangerous to women as they are to men.
No mother worth her salt would give the key
anyway. If a son can’t steal it, he doesn’t deserve it.”
-Robert Bly “Iron John”
Underestimating the Cunning and
Determination of the Right Wing and
Fossil Fuel Corporate Enemies of Climate
Science is Extremely Dangerous to our
Future
• They control the most powerful countries on Earth
• They know it, they are not stupid (rank-and-file
conservatives are different), and they will make
strategic moves to insure they keep it. Including
coo’coo’ing about modest and inconsequential carbon
taxes
• Do climate activists have the BACKBONE necessary for
this job?
Head of the Tyndall Climate Centre in
the U.K. – Prof. Kevin Anderson…
• …relays the universal reaction he’s gotten privately
from the policy ministers when he points out how our
path, and proposed paths for increasing renewable
energy and lowering CO2 emissions, are hopelessly too
small to avoid +2C, and that we’re on the path to +4C
long before the end of this century, and then hotter.
• He further relays that “+4C is universally among
scientists declared to be incompatible with an
organized society”…
• The reaction he got – “I can’t say that sort of thing in
Copenhagen” – this from the Secretary of State (2008
Copenhagen climate summit)
• Sources here, and here, here , here, and here
Anderson further points out…
• …Political scientists advised him that he and other
climate science academics should be very careful to
whom he spoke about these realities.
• A friend and senior policy maker advised him “you
can’t say these things to policy makers”
• The (U.K.) chief scientists who advise policy makers
agreed “I can’t say these things to the policy
ministers!”
• Anderson explains that the pressure being brought
to bear on climate science academics in the U.K. has
resulted in most giving rosy views in public and in
print, on what the policy ideas being brought up will
do for the future.
Yet when Anderson talks with them in
private, they admit – “I know it’s not true”
• I’m thinking of a white paper I read recently
trumpeting a “Pathway to our Renewables Future”
– and it clearly simply took renewables % of total
energy today, and french-curved them up to what
was desired(!) No thought of the energy required to
make that transformation, no thought to the
resource allocation changes needed, and No
appreciation of Generalized Jevon’s Paradox on
actual energy consumption.
• It’s just Pie-in-Sky Wishing-Will-Make-it-So, which
I fear is what too many elderly New Ager’s
absorbed from the 70’s bookstores of their youth
An Exasperated Prof. Kevin Anderson …
• “We’re all trying to spin the message to make it
acceptable to the next tier up” (64 min into this
talk)
• The tiers being – the climate scientists, to the
climate science/policy intermediaries, to the
policy advisors, to the chiefs in government, and
then to the international negotiation team at
climate talks.
• And with unreality rising with each tier passed
• We’re all playing “The Emperor’s New Clothes”,
with those few courageous scientists who speak
out, like Garrett, and like Anderson, pointing out
the insanity of it all.
The Point is This…
• When critical values are in peril, like the livability of
this Earth for all future generations of humans and so
many other species…
• You are dangerously wrong to continue to politely,
patiently ask permission from those who persist in
failing to show moral behavior or leadership… failing
to DO THEIR JOB (to put it as kindly as possible)
• You are dangerously wrong to continue proclaiming
your HOPE, that some day, if you just keep asking,
that your elected legislators will create laws with
some sense of planetary moral ethics. There is a
saying in the investment world – “Hope - is not a
strategy” (A REAL strategy is based on REALISM)
Honorable people ACT, and BEHAVE
like leaders.
• Dishonorable people worry what their corporate sponsors will feel.
• Dishonorable people pretend to listen, but in fact do not.
• Dishonorable people work at perfecting the art of handshaking and
smiling, and kissing babies, while having no backbone to act as if this is
the emergency that it genuinely is.
• Honorable politicians should be begging us, the common citizens, to
shut down the government and thereby FORCE them to ACT. They are
not. Instead they mumble excuses about their busy agendas.
• We’ve known about the danger to life on Earth due to fossil fuel
greenhouse effects for over 100 year now! We have waited past
critical tipping points and our future is now fated with increasingly
serious disasters for generations to come, because of the continued
cowardice, greed and short-term selfishness of lawmakers and their
corporate sponsors.
• They fail to act not because they do not understand. We compound
their utter disregard for the average citizen by naively believing that
one more letter will illuminate them. It is also insulting – to us! And
further emboldens them to do nothing.
1 in a Million
• Realize that the lawmakers of the United States – the 435
members of Congress, the 7 Supreme Court Justices, and the
President, add up to about 1 millionth of the U.S. population
• They are the One in a Million who ACTUALLY MAKE the laws the
other 350 million of us have to obey
• That is an awesome responsibility. They have staffs, they have
funding to accomplish their job… yet they do nothing. At best,
mumbling excuses or campaign platitudes.
• This is the most urgent and massively consequential issue of this
and all later generations. Scientists have been clear on this for
decades. So, don’t tell me they’re earnest and honorable and
well-meaning, but just “too busy” and need more letters.
• They could call news conferences and educate ALL about the
truths I’m relaying here. Yet they do not
• We are what you DO – and they clearly have no intention to
make necessary policy – PLEASE! CONFRONT this CLEAR FACT
before continuing!
But maybe if we’re patient, and we’re not confrontational,
and we’re diplomatic with our congresspeople, then through
patient spade-work we can compromise to find solutions –
I’ve heard this style advocated. I Ask You to Consider the
Consequences…
• Motesharrei et al. 2016 “…all societal collapses over the past 5,000 years
have involved both ’the stretching of resources due to the strain placed
on the ecological carrying capacity’ and ‘the economic stratification of
society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or ‘Commoners’) [poor].’ This ‘Elite’
population restricts the flow of resources accessible to the ‘masses’,
accumulating a surplus for themselves that is high enough to strain
natural resources. Eventually this situation will inevitably result in the
destruction of society.”
• “Elite power, the report suggests, will buffer ‘detrimental effects of the
environmental collapse until much later than for the Commoners,’
allowing the privileged to ‘continue business as usual despite the
impending catastrophe.’
• “’Science will surely save us’, the nay-sayers may yell. But technology,
argues Motesharrei, has only damned us further…” (by way of Jevon’s
Paradox)
“Power yields nothing
without demand”
- Fredrick Douglas
Then How?
• At one time, I considered an internet-organized
effort to identify in each congressional district and
state, new candidates who would make climate
action their top priority
• Followed by a large effort to write-in those
candidates, funded only through grass-roots efforts
• I no longer think this is the way
• It would take too many successful campaigns to
win, and would require changing too many minds…
It would require voting majorities over a majority of
districts, and it would take too long, even if it
eventually might succeed.
• So…
I Offer This: Occupy
Washington D.C.
• The power of media attention, with images
stirring public conscience, can be instantaneous
• We either deal with climate change, or little else
really matters about the future – that’s the first
fact to appreciate
• If climate activists, rather than celebrating
inconsequential meetings with their
congresspeople, instead canvassed the country to
get just 1 to 2 million people who would commit
to going to Washington D.C. for a different kind of
demonstration…
Occupy DC’s Goal Would be…
• To nonviolently, peacefully, but with determination, prevent “business as
usual” from continuing…
• To march on the Capitol and White House and walk past those who would
stand in their way.
• It would be to OCCUPY the core government building areas of D.C. until
congressional leadership publicly spoke to the assembled press with a
commitment to pass a steep and progressively steeper Tax-and-Dividend
law, and stiff trade sanctions against all other countries who don’t do the
same within 1 year.
• Not promises of “we’ll work on it”. Not this time. No…. A commitment
with promise of their immediate resignation if they fail. Filmed, FOR the
RECORD.
• It would be to PREVENT any other legislative action until these promises
were made, by a march so vast in number that normal business could not
continue.
• Arrests may happen. Let them happen, peacefully and without resistance.
Any violence would be a choice committed by the government, not the
occupiers. Until every jail cell is filled and no more can be arrested.
• But it would take at least a million, better if it were 2 million. That’s less
than ½ of 1% of America. Sufficiently educated, it is conceivably do-able. A
mass of humanity impossible to ignore, and that may inspire millions more
by their sheer courage and audacity.
Occupy DC
• …would NOT be to try and negotiate in congressional
offices. Remember: THEY work for US. I’m thinking of
the classic line of George Clooney in the film “Michael
Clayton” – “Do I LOOK like I’m NEGOTIATING!?”
• It would not be for getting a warm buzz by
communing with other placard-carriers
• It would not be about fellowship
• This would be different…
• This would be Focused. It would be As Serious as
the Consequences of Climate Change
• …it would be to deliver an ultimatum on behalf of all
future children and all Earth’s species
There are those who feel drawn
to Political Action
• I am not one of them. I love science, and teaching, and
identifying the truth of things, and thinking what actions
might make an actual difference in halting climate change,
once I understand the issues fully.
• But to those who are drawn to political action, I challenge
them to take up this cause.
• I challenge them to show that they are single-minded about
making an actual difference to climate, not just engaging in
feel-good but futile inconsequential activities
• Tim Garrett’s insights make even the most drastic policy
actions perhaps only helping us towards a future of
exponentially rising costs, instead of a future barely worth
living in at all. But that’s still worth doing.
• “Disobedience” – is a new film which has interesting
suggestions to make.
Forcing Policy Change: Lawsuits
• A number of climate scientists are urging
government prosecution of Fossil Fuel
corporations under the Anti-Racketeering (RICO)
Laws.
• RICO was passed to criminalize behavior of
corporations who lie about the damage their
own products do, and clearly apply here after
the recent revelation that Exxon-Mobil’s own
scientists were showing as long ago as 1981
how greenhouse warming from their oil would
be “catastrophic” to the future and update here.
• Yale Climate series “What Exxon Knew” (9:34)
The Latest on Prosecuting Exxon-Mobil
• As of March 29, 2016 - 17 state Attorneys General have joined
together to prosecute Exxon-Mobile (and soon the rest of Big Oil?)
for fraud, in their deliberate lying about climate change and fossil
fuels
• NY Atty Gen Schneiderman is joined in the coalition by attorneys
general from from California, Connecticut, D.C., Illinois, Iowa,
Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon,
Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and the U.S. Virgin
Islands.
• Source “What these attorneys general are doing is exceptionally
important,” Gore said. “Congress has been sharply constraining
the ability of the executive branch to perform its duties.”
• He noted that holding Big Tobacco accountable for fraudulently
denying that cigarettes cause cancer took 40 years, though.
• “We do not have 40 years to continue suffering the consequences
of the fraud allegedly being committed by the fossil fuel
companies,” he said. That investigation, too, began in the states
before the U.S. Department of Justice eventually got involved.
• “Our democracy has been hacked,” Gore said. “Otherwise this
would be done in Washington.”
There is good precedence from the
Tobacco Industry’s very similar
campaign against science
• In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
Act (RICO) lawsuit against the major tobacco
companies and their associated industry groups.
• In 2006, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler
ruled that the tobacco industry’s campaign to
“maximize industry profits by preserving and
expanding the market for cigarettes through a
scheme to deceive the public” about the health
hazards of smoking amounted to a racketeering
enterprise. (alas, 40 years after suits began)
Suing Governments for Gross Negligence
• A Dutch court has ruled that the national government has a legal
responsibility to protect its citizens against climate change, and
ordered faster cuts in greenhouse gases in that nation.
• However, in America, it’s different. Kivalina, Alaska sued ExxonMobil in Federal court over sea-level rise threatening their town.
It was dismissed.
• One of the key bases for the law suit was that Exxon-Mobil
deliberately lied to the affected people about the science of CO2
and climate. But the court decided to dismiss the case without
getting to this interesting question, so it provides no basis for later
suits. Such is the System in the United States.
• The State of New York, (and now California as well) is attempting
to prosecute Exxon-Mobil for funding dis-information campaigns
long AFTER their own scientists told them of the disastrous
climate implications of their business, using existing shareholder
disclosure laws
A Recent Lawsuit Submitted to U.S.
District Court of Oregon to Force Climate
Recovery
• In November 2015, by 21 young people (ages 8-19), to
force the U.S. government to reduce CO2 and institute
a “science-based climate recovery plan”
• The lawsuit is opposed by the Fossil Fuel Industry (not
surprising). They include the American Fuel and
Petrochemical Manufacturers -- which represents
ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Koch Industries and more -- the
American Petroleum Institute and the National
Association of Manufacturers. They are all arguing for
dismissal of the case
• The lawsuit (I’ll call it the “Oregon Case”) is also
opposed by the U.S. Government, (also not surprising)
which enacts legislation according to corporate lobbies’
wishes (see Gilens and Page 2014)
In April 2016 – The Federal District Judge
Denies Dismissal of the Oregon Case
• This has the potential to be quite important and even historic
• Judge Coffin wrote: “The debate about climate change and its impact has
been before various political bodies for some time now. Plaintiffs give this
debate justiciability by asserting harms that befall or will befall them
personally and to a greater extent than older segments of society. It may
be that eventually the alleged harms, assuming the correctness of
plaintiffs’ analysis of the impacts of global climate change, will befall all
of us. But the intractability of the debates before Congress and state
legislatures and the alleged valuing of short term economic interest
despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to
evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken
by the government. This is especially true when such harms have an
alleged disparate impact on a discrete class of society.”
• (above emphasis mine)
• The next step: Judge ordering Federal Govt to cease jeopardizing the
climate system? No doubt this will be appealed with great vigor, and
we’ll have to see how fair are judges further up the line.
The Plaintiffs, on hearing the Judge’s
Decision in the Oregon Case
A New Example of Victorious Young
People
• From the Apr 29, 2016 Huffington Post: Judge agrees
to force Washington State to create by the end of
2016, policies to substantially reduce GHG emissions
state-wide, after the usual foot-dragging and placations
we’re used to.
• This group is part of the James Hansen inspired “Our
Children’s Trust” organization
• Young people here, take note of the Bill Moyers
interview of plaintiff Kelsey Juliana.
• Hansen, former head of the Goddard Institute for
Space Sciences and long time dean of climate science,
resigned after his own soul-searching, looking at his
granddaughter and her future. He decided his new
activism would be best accomplished this way.
The 2015 UN Climate Convention -Paris
• This is the 21st Conference of the Parties to Climate
Change (COP21). Previous meetings have not led to
any progress on slowing CO2 emissions
• The major carbon emitters have submitted their
proposals before the meeting.
• The U.S. proposals do not include Tax-and-Dividend.
I’m not aware of any country that has submitted their
proposals that includes tax-and-dividend.
• As of this writing in Oct/Nov 2015, most of the smaller
countries have not submitted any proposals at all.
• Tyndall Climate Centre’s Dr. Kevin Anderson predicts
that nothing of significance will be agreed to in Paris.
That is also my judgment.
• The COP21 Paris summit begins in a few days, as I write
this.
The Pachamama Movement
• In the ancient Andean cultures, Pachamama is the Goddess who
sustains life
• The term has come to mean a movement which has as a central
goal the institution of legal protection not just for the present
peoples, but for future generations by guaranteeing rights to
Mother Nature herself
• Bolivia attempted to institute these ideas, and so has Peru, but have
been defeated by mining and oil corporate interests.
• It is certainly a key flaw of our present US legal system that
although future generations are implicit in the value of nearly all
long-range actions we do, that they have no legal rights whatsoever.
Our attitude has been – future generations should be grateful if
we leave them anything at all.
• Native American culture is said to have considered the impact on
the next 7 generations of people before undertaking an impact on
the lands that supported them. As author Peter Mathhiessen (“The
Snow Leopard” and many other great books) observed “we don’t
even consider one generation”. So much for the human values of
Laissez Faire Capitalism.
If You Have More Promising Strategies,
Given the Politics, the Physics, and the
Time Scales Already Presented…
• …then I would love to hear them.
• Perhaps I’ve overlooked something
• But please – keep Republican vs. Democrat ideology OUT
of this! I personally have no allegiance to any political
parties or groups. I find major flaws in all of them. I do not
feel a part of the Progressives, nor the Republicans,
Democrats, Libertarians, or any other group I can think of.
• I am a registered non-aligned and that best describes my
thinking. I’m looking for solutions to a very tough problem
and have no party political filters I’m interested in.
K44 Strategies – Policy: Key Points
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Fatal flaw of free-market approach to Commons: Exploit ASAP, use it up before the
next guy does = Tragedy of the Commons, plus the Culture of Economic Growth
as the top societal value, insures environmental degradation for all.
Voluntary actions hopeless. 1 billion wealthy people cutting their carbon footprint in
half only cuts global CO2 emissions by 13%
Economic strategy: motivate through PRICE the ending of CO2 emissions by ALL
people globally
Best single economic policy idea: Tax-and-Dividend with stiff trade sanctions
against trade partners who don’t do same
End global fossil fuel subsidies, which are of order 6% of Gross World Product
Tax consumption, not income, to lower environmental damages in general
“Oregon Case” law suit surprisingly still alive in ‘16 and could possibly FORCE govt
climate action - stay tuned. Washington State case a new victory here as well.
My thought: give legal standing to future Earth’s peoples and environment with a 28th
amendment to the Constitution
In our Representative Government: To enact good policy: Write your Congressman? –
hopeless! Gilens and Page (2014) show average citizens have ZERO influence on
what laws are passed, while economic elites have strong influence, and are 100%
effective in blocking unwanted laws. Voters only elect, but have no control over
lawmakers once in office. Motivates rampant lying from politicians
Therefore may require “Occupy DC”, blocking business as usual (peacefully but
insistently) with a ~million people, until the Press and sheer magnitude cause
Congress to enact Tax/Div and trade sanctions